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Maharashtra: Kolhapur man struggles for funds to pay brain-dead brother's hospital bills

Ruturaj's brother Sunraj, a painter, was admitted to a private hospital in Kolhapur after a speeding vehicle hit him and fled from the spot. The 31-year-old, who has a wife and two children, has been in coma since.

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Ruturaj Kuldeep (27) holds up images of his brother Sunraj (31), who is in a coma at a private hospital in Kolhapur
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For the last 14 days, a crowded CST has been home to 27-year-old Ruturaj Kuldeep, a resident of Kolhapur, who has come to Mumbai hoping to find aid that can help him pay the hospital bill of his brain-dead brother.

Ruturaj's brother Sunraj, a painter, was admitted to a private hospital in Kolhapur after a speeding vehicle hit him and fled from the spot. The 31-year-old, who has a wife and two children, has been in coma since.

While the family members are yet to come to terms with the incident, they are busy selling their home furniture to be able to collect enough money to pay the hospital bill, which, until May 13, was estimated to be Rs7 lakh. "We have been able to arrange for Rs3.5 lakh only. For more money, I came to Mumbai to approach the chief minister's office. The department has released a sum of Rs50,000 against the bills of Rs7 lakh," says Ruturaj, who claims to have been sitting outside the CM's office from morning till evening for the last five days, hoping to find some respite.

The private hospital was not the family's choice for treatment as they always knew it was beyond their reach. It was, however, an emergency call as the government hospital Sunraj was rushed to was not equipped to handle cases of neurosurgery, adds Ruturaj. "In that hospital itself we were told by a doctor to immediately take him to a private multi-specialty hospital which has a neurosurgeon. Now, my brother is brain-dead and we want to shift him to a government hospital, but the private hospital won't allow us to until we pay the bill," he rues.

Ruturaj got another blow, when he was denied relief under the Rajiv Gandhi Jeevandayee Arogya Yojana (RGJAY), as he approached the agency after the operation was over. "How do they expect the attendant of an accident case to call up authorities and do paperwork when the victim is fighting for his life? Moreover, it was the hospital's job to inform the authorities, but they too didn't as a result of which we were denied assistance. However, I feel these are just excuses to turn away people," he says.

His attempts to approach actor Salman Khan's Being Human organisation also did not pay off as the NGO claims to only help residents of Mumbai.

For interim payments of the medicines and treatment, the family began selling everything that was there in the house, right from beds and cupboard to sofa and other such items. "Everything that was worthy of being sold in our house has been sold off," Ruturaj says.

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